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ControChoices
ControChoices is a review series from Intrancity that premiered on February 11, 2017. Used mostly for his episodic reviews, it involves him presenting his unpopular opinions of various episodes and movies. The series currently has more than 190 reviews published and planned including those that have been deleted. Alongside The 3C's, this idea was thought up by Intrancity around December 2016 to type his reviews of episodes without relying on templates from other people. Format All the reviews are set on a background with one side being green and the other red. There are two thumbs pasted on each side with them opposing one another with the dark green side being a thumbs up whereas the dark red side is a thumbs down. Layering on top of them is a yellow quote with the inside of it being shaded dark. On top of the yellow quote bubble is the logo to the review. Inside the shaded part of the quote has the title of the piece of media being reviewed serving as the main heading of the review, placed at the top of the inside of the quote. The heading is usually the text seen on the piece of media's title card. If it's a screenshot, then the text features a font that is themed like the series' logo or just text in the main font, Asgalt. Beneath it has the title card being placed in a cloud, erased to match the outlines of a cloud as well as shaded to blend in. Underneath it shows the highlight/nadir section where it shows a screenshot of the episode depicting the highlight or nadir within the green/red-colored glowing tube. The highlight or nadir heading is in the best and worst rating's font, Viper Squadron (was Comic Sans until the "Jeepers, Creepers, Where is Peepers" review) and Scratched car print respectively, whereas the bottom font describing the heading is in Helvetica. On the other side has the info of the piece of media, describing which show it came from or which director directed it, what is the user's rating and everyone else's ratings (referred to as A.R.R. or Average Rating Range) and then the likability/unlikability section, which points out the main reasons as to why people like/dislike the piece of media. If the user agrees with the consensus, the reason is highlighted in a color similar to the Middling rating as it glows in the same size as the Elite rating's glow. Underneath them all is the user's thoughts where he or she explains why he or she likes or dislikes the episode. The heading to this section is named "Opinion". Depending on what type of ControChoice it is, the title card and highlight/nadir sections are positioned to the right if it's positive and to the left if negative. The extra info describing the series, ratings, and thoughts are positioned to the left on positive ControChoices and to the right on negatives. The format of the title card and highlight/nadir sections vary too, depending on which format the piece of media was originally in. Production The idea for the series dates back to December 2016 when Intrancity was making plans for a new review series that is different from all the other review templates he has seen like Animated Atrocities. One of these ideas he had in mind was a series where he would express his unpopular opinions called "ControChoices", derived from two words; "controversial" and "choices". He announced this "new set of deviations" on January 20, 2017, and the way he would make them was originally going to be like this: if he gets five ControChoice requests, he would make a poll asking people which review he should do and the highest voted ControChoice will be made. There has to be at least 5-7 votes on the poll and if it went well, he would release the first ControChoice two days later. However, seeing how long of a process this is as well as there appearing to be not many requests being given, this idea was ditched and he went with the straightforward request path instead. There are times when he made reviews without requests being given because of the amount of interest he has on those reviews. Evolution of the template The first ControChoice, a review on "F.U.N." was uploaded on February 11, 2017, followed by another SpongeBob review of "Sharks vs. Pods". Compared to the recent ControChoices, they seem noticeably different with the title card cloud and highlight/nadir sections being taller and there being a summary section instead of a likability/unlikability section. The summary section is self-explanatory and throughout its time, it was sometimes used for comedic effect, more than the likability/unlikability sections. It is also worth noting that the positive ControChoices where the piece of media was in a widescreen format had a light green color to it rather than normal green. Some other minor differences are that the bottom text of the highlight/nadir sections are colored plain green and white rather than dark green and dark red and that the reviews are a lot shorter. This was during a time when Intrancity felt like he didn't need to watch the episodes to make the review as he thinks he has the episodes and its qualities in mind. Throughout the changes made to the ControChoice template, minor edits had been made to tweak the template. The first of these noticeable changes was when the summary section was replaced by the likability/unlikability section starting with his "T.K.O." review, feeling like people are making ControChoices on episodes that aren't necessarily unpopular (like how one user did a negative ControChoice on "One Coarse Meal") plus the fact that summaries feel pointless. He updated the templates to feature this change so that people can point out why people like/dislike the episode as opposed to him to her liking/disliking it. This was pretty much the only change that happened to these templates as they didn't get updated with the new changes since. When he felt like the size of the title cards needed to be tweaked to be proportionate with its respective format on his scorecards, he, later on, felt like the same should apply his ControChoices where the tall size of the cloud and highlight/nadir sections, as well as the messy cloud, caught him off-guard. Starting with his "Ruthless People" ControChoice, the clouds are a lot smoother and he fixed the light green error on the widescreen positive ControChoices. The fonts saw a change as well. When coloring the bottom text of the nadir section red on his "Crushing Defeat" ControChoice, he thought it looked fine as applied it to future negative ControChoices. To better resemble the font on the new Elite font, much like how the old font to the Highlight heading on the highlight section is to the old font of the Elite rating, the heading's font changed from Comic Sans to Viper Squadron. Because he didn't save the positive templates, there were times when the heading was light green instead of plain green. While working on the ControChoice Month premieres in October 2019, now that Intrancity knows how to precisely position text and layers, he felt like the spacing on the layers needed to be short and even, so he did just that by making the top info space out each other by 50 pixels, distance that and the title card slightly apart from the heading border and have the text align with the outlines of the background. Since his reviews are now longer than ever, it would take a longer time for him to type the reviews not only because of how long they are but also because of how the text was aligned where it would overlap with the highlight/nadir sections or the border of the quote bubble that he has to work more on adjusting the alignment of the text and the size of it so that it fits the opinion section without overlapping with any of the borders. He would fix that issue starting with his "Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling" ControChoice where he would type the review inside the path he made for the review to fit in. But, since he's alright with his reviews being longer, he thinks that it's a better idea to type the review in Word and paste it into Photoshop once he's done revising it because if Photoshop crashes, it sometimes won't save his review or even the ControChoice. Word can auto-save his review so recovering the unsaved review is pretty likely. He would implement this technique starting with the next ControChoice, "Let's Get Serious". Pasting the review into the ControChoices template does come with an issue, though; the apostrophes and quotation marks aren't in the Asgalt font, which forces Intrancity to inspect the review for punctuations not in the Asgalt font. List of ControChoices Main article: List of ControChoices Category:Review_series